Beyond Divide and Rule: Weak Dictators, Natural Resources and Civil Conflict (original) (raw)
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Using an agent-based computational framework designed to explore the incidence of conflict between two nominally rival ethnic groups, we demonstrate that the impact of ethnic minority rule on civil war onset could be more nuanced than posited in the literature. By testing the effects of three key moderating variables on ethnic minority rule, our analysis demonstrates that: (i) when ethnicity is assumed to be salient for all individuals, conflict onset increases with size of the minority in power, although when salience is permitted to vary, onset decreases as minority and majority approach parity; (ii) fiscal policy—the spending and investment decisions of the minority EGIP—moderates conflict; conflict decreases when leaders make sound decisions, increases under corrupt regimes, and peaks under ethno-nationalist regimes that place a premium on territorial conquest; and lastly (iii) natural resources—their type and distribution—affect the level of conflict which is lowest in agrarian economies, higher in the presence of lootable resources, and still higher when lootable resource are “diffuse”. Our analysis generates a set of propositions to be tested empirically, subject to data availability.
Who controls the wealth? Electoral system design and ethnic war in resource-rich countries
Electoral Studies, 2014
Both natural resource wealth and electoral system design are frequently investigated factors in the civil wars literature. So far, however, there is no well-known study which explicitly considers the interaction effect between these two factors on the risk of violent ethnic conflict. We argue that resource-rich countries with a proportional electoral system for the legislature are less prone to ethnic civil war than resource-rich countries with a majoritarian or mixed electoral system, as proportional electoral systems tend to increase the effective number of parliamentary parties and thus the number of groups who can share state control over resource wealth. We find empirical support for this argument using binary time-series-cross-section analysis covering 83 to 140 countries between 1984 and 2007.
Civil War Outcomes, Regime Change, and Economic Disparities Between Social Groups
Does regime change impact the economic discrimination or opportunities of social groups? We argue that economic outcomes are unlikely to change without elite displacement, such as after a rebel victory in a civil conflict. Without elite displacement, changes in government institutions do not lead to substantial change in economic outcomes. The continuation of elites in power contributes to maintaining status quo policies. Regime change after rebel victories leads to meaningful changes in economic disparities, but not after government victories or when regime change occurs without conflict. We discuss our theory in the context of post conflict Guatemala and Uganda, and liberalization without civil conflict in Honduras. We test our theory with panel data on economic discrimination for 107 countries between 1980-2003 from the Minorities at Risk Project (2009), and test the robustness of the results with a small cross sectional dataset on horizontal economic inequality from Østby (2009). The results are robust across the datasets and case studies. The findings suggest the relationship between democracy and economic disparities depend on power structures in society.
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2011
Using an agent-based computational framework designed to explore the incidence of conflict between two nominally rival ethnic groups, we demonstrate that the impact of ethnic minority rule on civil war onset could be more nuanced than posited in the literature. By testing the effects of three key moderating variables on ethnic minority rule, our analysis demonstrates that: (i) when ethnicity is assumed to be salient for all individuals, conflict onset increases with size of the minority in power, although when salience is permitted to vary, onset decreases as minority and majority approach parity; (ii) fiscal policy-the spending and investment decisions of the minority EGIP-moderates conflict; conflict decreases when leaders make sound decisions, increases under corrupt regimes, and peaks under ethno-nationalist regimes that place a premium on territorial conquest; and lastly (iii) natural resources-their type and distribution-affect the level of conflict which is lowest in agrarian economies, higher in the presence of lootable resources, and still higher when lootable resource are "diffuse". Our analysis generates a set of propositions to be tested empirically, subject to data availability.
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2007
The existing literature identifies natural resource wealth as a major determinant of civil war. The dominant causal link is that resources provide finance and motive (the “looting rebels” model). Others see natural resources as causing “political Dutch disease,” which in turn weakens state capacity (the “state capacity” model). In the looting rebels model, resource wealth first increases, but then decreases
Oil Revenues, Ethnic Fragmentation and Political Transition of Authoritarian Regimes
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Natural resources are generally associated to negative effects on the political environment of a country. This paper explores the impact that oil revenues have on the establishment of a given political system. Based on previous literature, a political economy perspective is employed. A simple game theoretical approach in order to explain the relationships between oil revenues, political instability (conflicts) and emergence of different political systems is presented. The implementation of particular redistributive fiscal policies together with the possibility that paternalistic or "predatory" autocracies emerge are considered. Under certain circumstances, a process of full democratization is argued not to represent an optimal choice for the oil-rich authoritarian nations. Since governments prefer to remain nondemocratic, in order to prevent internal conflicts from occurring, authoritarian countries have to undertake redistributive activities. Under other assumptions, governments of oil-rich nations prefer to introduce large military sectors. The present analysis determines how the emergence of redistributive of predatory policies depends on relevant parameters related to initial income, oil revenues and social inequality. Finally, we study the importance of socio-ethnical fragmentation in determining the political transition of oil producing nations.
Resource rents, institutions, and violent civil conflicts
Defence and Peace Economics, 2014
Natural resources have been blamed for inducing slow growth and sparking civil conflicts and violence. This paper first develops a model to account for the hazard of armed civil conflicts as a manifestation of the natural resource curse which is mediated by the quality of both economic and political institutions. We then use recently published data on institutional quality and natural resource rents to measure the potential impact of the resource curse on violent civil conflicts using a panel of data for over 100 countries in the period 1970-2010. Our model explicitly accounts for the role of good economic and political institutions in deterring the recourse to violence as well as the extent to which they might weaken the resource rents effect.
Economic and Political Causes of Civil War in Africa: Some Econometric Results
Journal of Peace, Conflict and Development, 2003
In this paper, we investigated whether civil wars in Africa have economic and political causes. The model is based on the Collier-Hoeffler "greed" and "grievance" theory in which rebels will conduct a civil war for "loot-seeking" and "justiceseeking" reasons. Using logit models the propositions were tested empirically. In particular, six variables, GDP per capita growth rate in the preceding period, the amount of natural resources (proxied by primary commodity exports-GDP ratio), peace duration, democracy, social fractionalisation, and population size are significant and strong determinants of the onset of civil wars in Africa. The policy implication is the combination of economic diversification, poverty and population reduction, and political reforms so as to prevent conflict situations in African countries. *The author is a Principal Economist with the Development Research Department of the African Development Bank. He is indebted to Maurice Kponnou who provided valuable research assistance.
Why do poor countries suffer costly conflict? Unpacking per capita income and the onset of civil war
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2013
Empirical studies on the causes of civil war robustly show that poor countries are more likely to suffer civil war than rich ones. However, the interpretations of this finding differ. The literature proposes three different causal mechanisms: (1) poverty leads to grievances; (2) income proxies the opportunity-cost of rebelling; and (3) income proxies state capacity. Using factor analysis, logistic modeling and multiple imputation, we test which of the three possible explanations can best explain the link between poverty and conflict. We find per capita income to belong to a wealth/poverty dimension, and to have little in common with “pure” measures of grievance and state capacity. Thus our findings support the opportunity-cost argument. The wealth dimension is also shown to be the most important underlying cause of civil war.
Journal of Peace Research, 2017
There is a consensus that civil wars entail enormous economic costs, but there is little systematic analysis of the determinants of their heterogeneous destructiveness. Moreover, reliably estimating these costs has proven challenging, due to the complexity of the relationship between violence and socioeconomic conditions. In this article, we study the effect of ethnic fractionalization of war-torn countries on the economic consequences of civil war. Building on an emerging literature on the relationships between ethnicity, trust, economic outcomes, and conflict processes, we argue that civil wars erode interethnic trust and highly fractionalized societies pay an especially high price, as they rely heavily on interethnic business relations. We use the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals and measure the economic impact of civil war. Our focus is on the years of armed conflict in a sample of 20 countries for which we observe an average annual loss of local GDP per capita of 17.5%, though with remarkable variation across cases. The empirical analysis provides supporting evidence in the form of a robust positive association between ethnic fractionalization and our measures of war-induced economic costs.